Issues of meaning and structure in the symphonic poem

Questions of how composers reconcile the relationship between content and structure when music is based on a non-musical idea have been explored in the genre of the tone poem since Liszt first coined the term “symphonische Dichtung” in 1848. This study explores issues that arise when non-musical content serves as an inspirational touchstone in the genre of the tone poem. Using a combination of traditional analytical tools and ideas from narrative theory, three comparative case studies are presented as a way to explore the interactions between music and three contrasting types of non-musical programs: narrative story, poetry, and painting. The first two chapters of the study explore the origins of symphonic poems, the historical debate about their structural integrity, and the ways in which narrative theory can be a useful tool with which to understand meaning in the musical form and content of music based on a non-musical program. These introductory chapters are followed by three case studies, each involving a pair of works. The first case study compares Strauss’s Death and Transfiguration and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, two popular works in which narrative programs are combined with principles of sonata form. Although the traditional form has many parallels to narrative storytelling in its use of oppositional forces, discrepancies between the necessities of musical form and narrative form reveal themselves in each of the examples. In the second case study, interaction between poetry and music is explored in Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and in Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending. While issues of narrative are still relevant in these tone poems, they are subordinated to poetic style, symbolism, structure, and alliteration. The final case study investigates issues that arise when painting is used as the non-musical medium. In Dutilleux’s Timbres, espace, mouvement and my own tone poem, Dream of The Sleeping Gypsy, the structural and content-based parallels between the music and the program proved to be the least tangible of the three mediums discussed in the dissertation, due to the subjective nature of our perceptions when viewing painting and the spatial unfolding of painting as opposed to the temporal unfolding of music. Here I focus on the compositional process itself, exploring the psychological and emotional effects of the paintings on the composers as a way to gain deeper insights into connections between the painting and the music.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference